Overlooking ancestors or entire lines can easily be done when researching. I find that I am more likely to look at one of my American lines, or my mother’s Holborow family than my father’s English side. That is just personal preference (and the number of people also seriously researching the Holborows is fairly small).

However, there are family lines that rapidly run out of steam due to a lack of records. In this case I wouldn’t so much say they are overlooked as under-represented: if the records were there, I’d be all over them like ants at a picnic. Case in point, my 3 x great-grandmother Mary McMillan/McMillian Payne. She appears from nowhere, married and gives birth and then disappears! Where did she go? Where is her family?

But I am not here to talk about Mary.

Another reason why sometimes specific research can avoid people (alright, the reason why sometimes I avoid researching specific people) is when you get the same name debacle. Case in point: John Neal.

Neal is not a particularely rare surname, especially when you consider the most common spelling alternative of Neale. And when you’re in a small Wiltshire village, that surname can proliferate wildly. What’s the deal with John Neal?

Do you remember Ethelbert Neal, who dumped his wife and ran off to America, remarried and had a whole new life…? Of course you do. The wife he left behind, Emma Neal nee Wilcox, ‘took up with’ an Estcourt Neal, a local shoemaker (and likely named after the local lords of the manor, the Escourt-Cresswells). The pair never married, and Emma died in 1876 aged just 45. I was curious about the familial relationship between Estcourt and Ethelbert. I had a good handle on Ethelbert as his father, William, was the brother of 4 x great-grandmother, Catherine.

With a name like Estcourt Neal, he wasn’t hard to find in the Sherston baptisms of 1832 (likewise, his nephew and namesake born in 1855!)

Unfortunately, by the time of the 1841 census, we find that Estcourt and his siblings (John, Eazer and Daniel) are living with their widowed mother – Sarah – in the home of Sarah’s parents, William and Mary Dickenson. Where is John? There is a John Neal buried in Sherston on 28 September 1834, aged just 29. This seems a likely candidate. His age at death puts his date of birth somewhere around 1805. Is there a matching baptism? Yes. Quite a few, actually.

This is why researching a … productive family like the Neals can be so frustrating! Although with a little logic and some cross-researching, we can maybe narrow that down a touch.

If we assume that John was himself from and baptised in the parish of Sherston then we have four options to go with:

1. John, baptised 13 November 1796, son of William and Sarah
2. John, baptised 5 May 1805, son of John and Ann
3. John, baptised 14 December 1806, son of John and Betty
4. John, baptised 22 January 1809, son of William and Sarah

We can make at least one assumption from the above: that 1 and 4 are likely born to the same parents, so there is probably a corresponding burial between 1796 and 1809. And because we’re dealing with an uncommon name, there are three possibilities!

1. John, buried 4 March 1797
2. John, buried 19 March 1805
3. John, buried 25 January 1807

So Burial 1 or Burial 2 could be Baptism 1. Burial 2 could only be Baptism 1 as it is before Baptism 2 onwards. Burial 3 could be Baptism 1, 2 or 3. None of the burial registers at this point for Sherston contain parents names for infants or ages of the deceased. Let’s apply some logic.

If William and Sarah wanted to baptise a son with the name John, why did they wait 13 years to do it? Could their other baptisms help flesh things out? They had many children, and seemed to suffer many losses, with many names coming up time and again as multiple entries (William, Mary, Sarah). Between 1804 and 1808, they baptise a number of children – all daughters. Their previous son, Thomas, was baptised in 1803. Then came John (the second) in 1809. Would this imply, therefore, that the John baptised in 1796 didn’t die until 1805, and that the 1797 burial is for another, up until this point, unforeseen John? If that is the case then it seems likely that the 1807 burial is for the 1806 John, baptised to John and Betty (sidenote: her maiden name was Holborow, from a distant branch).

What of this other mystery John? Well, a trip to the Wiltshire Wills shows that a John Wickam Neal of Great Sherston died intestate and his sister, Sarah Daw, swore a bond as his administratrix (i.e. female administrator) or his intestate estate on 6 March 1797, just three days after he was [potentially] buried. This would take that burial out of the running for one of our possible Johns.

John, the 1809 son of William, marries a Sarah Neal (because of course …) in Sherston in 1839 so cannot be Estcourt’s father.

This only leaves John, the son of John and Ann, to be Estcourt’s father. Hurrah, we cry! This all makes sense and is nice and tidy. Well done.

Until we look at the UK census returns. Where we have one John Neal, living in Sherston, giving his place of birth as Sherston, and his age equates consistently to a year of birth of between 1797 and 1799, thus Baptism 1 would make most sense. Only it can’t really. He marries Elizabeth Gardner in Sherston in 1818 and, after a career as a tiler and builder, he died in 1885 and was buried in a non-conformist (Baptist) ceremony in Sherston. But he isn’t Estcourt’s father, John, I am confident of that. So who the heck does he belong to…?!

And why do so many Neals marry other Neals?! Not to mention the Frances Neale who married a John Neale, but her name was actually Frances Rice, but her mum was a Neale, but Frances was born way after her mother married Mr. Rice …

Oh, and John, son of John and Ann…? There are two separate John/Ann marriages in Sherston that could possibly be this John’s parents.

This right here is why I often ‘overlook’ some families. Just when you think you’ve sliced the Gordian knot, there are more tangles. The frustration. The madness.